Ngā reo Māori nō te pakanga – Māori voices from the war

Awatea Maori Choir singing for the Kiwi Request Session at the British Forces Radio Station in Bari, Italy, 1945. Photograph by E.E. Winter. Ref: DA-08473-F. Alexander Turnbull Library. /records/22888595

The choir was made up of men from the 28 (Māori) Battalion. From left to right: J.H. Bowman, Coromandel; B.K. Ormond, Hawkes Bay; F.L. Bunting, Auckland; M.Mason, New Plymouth; J. Taingahoe, Ruatoria; H. Raukawa, Taihape; S. Taniora, North Auckland, J.J. Turei, Whakatane; N. Mate, Whakatane; T. Paora, Waitara. 

The recordings the Mobile Unit made with the men of the 28 (Māori) Battalion are probably the most well-known of all the recordings they made. Between 2010 and 2013, many were transcribed, translated and uploaded to the official Māori Battalion website, created by historian Dr Monty Soutar and Manatū Taonga, New Zealand’s Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Recordings of waiata sung by these men have become part of the rich legacy of this unit.

If you haven’t visited the Battalion website, I highly recommend it. It now features a page for every man who served in the 28 Battalion in World War II and also men of the Māori Contingent and Pioneer Battalion in World War I. It is rich in photographs, diary entries and letters, whānau contributions and archival audio. This website was my introduction to the Mobile Unit recordings. While working for the RNZ Sound Archives in 2012, I was asked to search for any Māori Battalion material that might have been overlooked in earlier searches. I came across this recording made by the Mobile Unit in Egypt in January 1943.

It was described in the existing catalogue as “Christmas in a NZ General Hospital with carol singing by a Māori party.” On listening to the recording, it was found to contain the voices of 14 men from the Māori Battalion who send greetings to whānau in te reo Māori, while others sing “Tapu te Pō – Silent Night”, together with Nurse Wiki Kātene (Ngāti Toa). It is an incredibly culturally rich recording, but one seemed to have been largely overlooked for the 70 years since it was recorded. With Monty’ s help we picked out the names of most of the men and the hapu and iwi to whom they sent greetings. They were men who had been wounded during the fighting of the Alamein campaign in October and November 1942.

Finding this taonga made me wonder what else could be hiding in this collection, and inspired a desire to work with it to enable the voices in it to be more widely known and available for everyone to hear.

Members of 28 (Māori) Battalion with the Broadcasting Unit. On the far right, Arch Curry holds the microphone for an officer – probably Captain Charles Bennett. He is possibly recording this radio talk about the Battalion’s actions in Libya, in January 1942. Photograph taken by Dr C N D’Arcy [Ref: DA-11481-F. Alexander Turnbull Library /records/22826929 ]

Captain Charles Bennett (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Pikiao), who is seen being recorded in the photo above, eventually became the Māori Battalion’s Commanding Officer. Before the war he had worked for the National Broadcasting Service, providing commentary for some of their early broadcasts of major Māori events and hui. You can hear him at work in 1938 covering the hui at Tūrangawaewae when Princess Te Puea Hērangi was presented with her C.B.E. by the Governor-General. After the war he had an illustrious public service career, was New Zealand’s first Māori High Commissioner (spending several years in Malaysia), and was knighted in 1975.

In November 1944, while recuperating from severe wounds he received from a mine in North Africa, Charles Bennett was interviewed for The Listener magazine and commented on the work of the Broadcasting Service Mobile Unit. The interviewer asked about Bennett’s own work as a broadcaster while overseas, which included some commentary for the BBC and for the New Zealand unit: “When there were Māori broadcasts, I was the compere,” he said, noting that Māori men were recorded “not as often as we would have liked, but most acceptable when it happened. It means a good deal for Māori soldiers to be able to speak to their people. More I think than it does to Pākēha troops.” ¹

Bennett observed that Māori soldiers themselves chose the men who would make recordings and speak on behalf of their unit, and this was often done along tribal lines. He explained that the messages home were highly valued by his people, because they were a continuation of Māori oral traditions. “As far back as our traditions go we have been moved by the human voice. We don’t write our thoughts. We utter them. Broadcasting makes our past live again,” he said.²

As well as the men of the Māori Battalion, it is important to note Māori who served elsewhere were also recorded. This recording from 1942 features greetings from several Māori men who were in the Royal Air Force in North Africa, while Tamaio Paiki (Kāti Huirapa, Kāi Tahu) who served with 2 Divisional Signals, recorded this talk about being the first Māori to enter the fortress of Tobruk in 1941.

Messages from Māori men to whānau and friends back home were recorded and broadcast as part of the programme “With the Boys Overseas” (which you can read more about here.) They were also recorded speaking and singing in special programmes such as these concerts recorded in Egypt and Italy. Māori officers were recorded delivering ‘talks’ about the actions their men had been involved in and sending condolences to whānau of the dead and injured. These were often presented in te reo Māori and English, and may have featured in the Sunday night Māori news bulletins presented by Wiremu Parker during the war.

How many Māori were recorded by the Mobile Unit? At this point we simply don’t know, because we don’t even have a total for how many New Zealanders as a whole were recorded on the 1600 discs of the Mobile Unit which survive today. On some discs there may only be one man speaking, on others up to a dozen. On some, there may be more men speaking than are currently listed in written metadata. A full survey of the surviving discs and identifying and counting all the speakers is part of the scope of the work I am doing this year. Uncovering the number of Māori who were recorded, and the hapu and iwi they are from will form part of this research. There may even be recordings of Māori soldiers in overseas sound archives – the image at the top of this page is of a broadcast being made by a Māori choir on British Forces Radio in Italy in 1945 – another avenue of research.

I hope at the end of my work to be able to create lists of men whose voices can be still heard, so that these can be shared with their iwi, hapu and descendants and linked to each man’s entry in databases such as the Māori Battalion website and Auckland War Memorial Museum’s Online Cenotaph

References: 1, 2 “When the Māoris come home again”, The New Zealand Listener, 24 November 1944, p.11.